World News - Iraq attacks: 'Why did she have to die for such a silly cause?'

A week ago Ted Elliott opened up a surprise parcel to find a pair of silk-lined gloves, an early Christmas present posted by his daughter as she set off for Iraq. It was typical of Staff Sergeant Sharron Elliott, 34, her family said yesterday after learning of her death on Sun in Iraq, to be so thoughtful. She had noticed that Parkinson's disease had left her father's hand permanently frozen & in the flurry of pre-deployment had remembered to send the present. "She was just such a lovely girl, so sensible & kind. We were just waiting to find out her new address so we could send something to her," Mr Elliott's wife said. "Ted is utterly heartbroken. It was his only daughter. You just don't expect them to go before you. "When she said she was going to Iraq I said I didn't believe in them being sent over there. She was just treating it as a job she had to do. She had been to many difficult places, but I don't think she liked this one. Why did she have to die for such a silly cause?" ... http://news.independent.co.uk

Iran said on Tuesday it was reducing dollar-based transactions to a minimum in response to US curbs on Iranian banks amid rising tension over the Islamic republic’s nuclear programme.“We will carry out our foreign currency transactions with currencies other than the dollar and our use of the dollar will reach a minimum level,” Economy Minister Davoud Danesh Jafari was quoted as saying by student news agency ISNA.“Some US banks have been disrupting our dollar transactions for a long time and Iran, in return, has been decreasing its dependence on the dollar,” he added, without elaborating.The move comes after the US Treasury Department in September announced that it had barred Iran’s state-run Bank Saderat from having any links with US-owned banks because of its “support for terrorism”....http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/business/2006/November/business_November418.xml&section=business

Six senior police officers were arrested Tuesday after gunmen dressed in commando uniforms kidnapped dozens of male staff and visitors from a Higher Education Ministry office.The Interior Ministry said that among those arrested was the police chief for the Karradah district, the central Baghdad region where the daylight raid occurred. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who leads a Shiite-dominated Iraqi government, said the attack was "the result of disagreements and conflict between militias." Assassinations and kidnappings have become common as fighting between Sunni and Shiite Muslims has increased dramatically this year. Higher Education Minister Abed Theyab initially said as many as 150 people had been seized, which would have made it the largest such abduction during the conflict. Later, the prime minister's office said 45 to 50 people had been taken and 20 of them had been released within hours....http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2006-11-14-killings-abductions_x.htm?csp=34

What's believed to be a first-in-the-nation report paints a disturbing picture about hospital care.The report was done for the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council.It shows Pennsylvania hospitals reported more than 19-thousand patients contracted an infection while in their care in 2005. It reflected a 64-percent increase in reported infections over 2004. But the 2005 figures also considered more types of surgery and infections....http://www.koin.com/Global/story.asp?S=5680968

Vice President Dick Cheney asked a federal judge Tuesday to dismiss a lawsuit brought against him by former CIA operative who says the White House leaked her identity to the press.Cheney's attorneys criticized the lawsuit in court papers, saying it invented constitutional rights, intruded on national security discussions and came two years after the statute of limitations had expired.Former CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson claims that she was outed as retribution for her husband's criticism of the administration's prewar intelligence on Iraq.Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald spent years investigating who revealed her identity to syndicated columnist Robert Novak in 2003 but nobody was charged with the leak. Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who faces trial in January on perjury and obstruction, is the only person charged in the case....http://www.forbes.com/business/healthcare/feeds/ap/2006/11/14/ap3174786.html

The United States or other countries will one day be forced to consider pre-emptive action if Iran and North Korea continue to seek nuclear weapons, a senior U.S. government official said on Tuesday. The United States and its allies have accused Iran of pursuing nuclear weapons under the guise of a civilian energy program and are pushing for United Nations' sanctions. Tehran denies the accusation.North Korea conducted an underground test of what was believed to have been a small nuclear weapon last month.If North Korea refused to renounce its nuclear program and Iran developed a nuclear weapons capability, it would lead other countries in their regions to seek nuclear weapons, said the U.S. official, speaking on condition he was not identified."We, the United States, and others who might be threatened by these developments will have to look at how to respond and inevitably I think people will have to look at the question of pre-emption," the official told reporters...http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061115/pl_nm/nuclear_iran_usa_dc